Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Playing the Wikisourcerer

For any #Wikisource, the proofread page extension provides a must have functionality. Given that it is used on every Wikisource, it is reasonable to expect consistent functionality. The screenshot below shows the the proofreading page for "Noodlot" a book by Louis Couperus. As you can see, the page numbers are in blue or red and they show the classic MediaWiki behaviour. When you compare this with any index page for proofreading on the English language Wikisource, you will find the numbers in multiple colours indicating its position in the proofreading work flow.

As Wikisource is primarily a workflow environment, it is crucial to have a complete implementation of the tooling. When asked, it was indicated that many of the small fixes happen exclusively on the English Wikisource. This lack of support for the proofreading extension elsewhere is an additional argument for doing away with all the single language Wikisources. When one Wikisource provides adequate tooling for the workflow, another wiki can be used to publish its finished content.

A Wiki publishing content in a final form can publish on behalf of any and all open content project that create finished products. Such an expanded project where finished content is marketed to our public will achieve multiple goals: